Eroticism is born alongside cinema itself: The Kiss (just one year after the Lumière brothers’ first screenings) and After the Ball — with the first on-screen undressing of a woman down to her corset — turn the kiss and the female body into something simultaneously shocking and magnetic.

In the 1920s–30s, Europe boldly explores forbidden desire, including homosexual relationships. Germany, still reeling from defeat in the First World War, becomes the avant-garde: Different from the Others, Mädchen in Uniform, Ecstasy(Austria).

But! In 1934, the United States introduces the Hays Code — a strict system of censorship, particularly around sexuality. Eroticism retreats into metaphor, suggestion and subtext: Crime Without Passion, Spellbound. Europe has fewer formal restrictions, but the war slows everything down.

The 1960s mark a turning point. The contraceptive pill, loosening censorship, the sexual revolution. By the 1970s, eroticism becomes part of mainstream culture: erotic films and pornography share poster space at the cinema, boundaries dissolve, anything goes. The symbol of the era — Emmanuelle.

But! The spread of AIDS in the 1980s shatters the atmosphere of carefree freedom. In the 1990s, eroticism becomes anxious: lovers no longer come together — they struggle. Desire is power, manipulation, danger (Basic Instinct, Romance X).

Today the situation is paradoxical. Intimate scenes are filmed with greater caution, intimacy coordinators have appeared, and the emphasis has shifted from provocation to psychology. In series such as Sense8, intimacy is presented as a language of empathy and mutual connection.

Films mentioned in the lecture:
«The Kiss» (1896)
«After the Ball» (1897)
«Different from the Others» (1919)
«Mädchen in Uniform» (1931)
«Ecstasy» (1933)
«Crime Without Passion» (1934)
«Spellbound» (1945)
«Some Like It Hot» (1959)
«And God Created Woman» (1956)
«Emmanuelle» (1974)
«Basic Instinct» (1992)
«Sense8» (2015, Netflix)
«The Key» (1983)